Frank whirled on Dillon. “I’m not in the mood for your metaphysical theories, Brooks. I don’t care how many times we’ve argued about those forces, life follows certain rules.”
“And that rule was fate.” Dillon smirked and cocked his chin at me. “From the very moment that little flight risk started travelling the world, she seemed to be chasing something. I thought she was looking for inner peace, but...she was searching for something else—even if she didn’t know it.”
My heart skipped. He sounded so confident, so sure.
“She couldn’t stay still in one place for long,” Dillon continued as if he’d waited until this moment to spill everything he’d been thinking. “She hopped between continents almost weekly as if hunting for theone thingthat stood any chance of keeping her alive when her pendant stopped working.”
“Your necklace!” Frank spun back to face me. “What about your necklace?” His gaze locked on my throat, his face going white. “Where is it, Rook? What have you done?”
“Don’t worry.” Dillon shrugged. “She doesn’t need it anymore, and you and I are going to talk about that. If you knewhow badly it was hurting her, I have a score to settle, but for now...I reckon she travelled like a maniac because...she was searching forhim.”
Arching his chin in Lucien’s direction, he added, “You can’t tell me it wasn’t fate that led her to him, despite all the odds. And you can’t convince me that something bigger than us isn’t in charge, even if your precious science can’t prove it.”
Heavy silence fell as Frank sucked in a breath, looking between Lucien and me.
Sickness clenched my stomach as Lucien took my hand and squeezed. Whisper crowded closer, sensing the tension but not knowing how to protect us.
The stress and secrets, the sickness and dying—it all pressed painfully on my heart.
I tripped against Lucien.
“Rook?” He clutched me close. “You alright?”
My ears rang and my pulse thundered and the softest snap echoed in my mind. A rush of memories—all blocked off and buried after the trauma of watching my parents dissolve—swarmed me.
I remembered a file.
A file that’d fallen out of my father’s safe when he’d grabbed his passport for a quick business trip. He’d shot into the shower—late for his flight—and I’d hidden under his desk trying to understand the sheets and sheets of DNA gibberish.
It made no sense...until now.
Goosebumps shot down my arm as the gift inside me tripped through time and peered through my childhood eyes.
I saw everything as if it was realright now.
My father’s study, the sound of the shower running, the paperwork in my trembling smaller hands.
I read it as if it was there in front of me.
Subject L-Ashfall (male, 21 days old, presented with terminal hypoplastic left heart syndrome) was administered the inaugural intravenous dose of the R gene. Subject entered acute yang crisis: core temperature spiked, spontaneous dermal ignition occurred, and cardiac arrest was noted. Standard cooling and frequency protocols failed. At 09:17, in the midst of the subject’s disintegration, a single cryovial containing a recently injected R gene egg from Dr. Snowden was carried toward the cryofreeze. A micro-kinetic event occurred. The testtube fell into the crib of L-Ashfall and upon physical contact, the subject’s body temperature normalised. Cardiac function healed. Retrospective analysis confirms this was the first documented instance of spontaneous yin-yang polarity bonding. We suspect, based on regular DNA analysis, that the two subjects have remained quantum-entangled at a cellular level ever since.
Time unfolded, kicking me out of the past and firmly back into the present.
I sucked in a sharp breath, disoriented and dizzy, the words burning into my eyes as if they’d been typed onto my brain.
There was no physical way I would’ve ever remembered something like that. I could still feel the paper in my fingers. Still hear the water running—
“Rook?” Lucien cupped my cheeks. “Speak to me. What’s wrong? What happened?”
Swallowing hard, I drowned in him.
Dillon was right. He was right about everything. Not just about forces or fate but what he’d said about my parents. Ihadbeen special. I’d been so special I hadn’t even been conceived in the normal way. My conception came in a test tube. They’d injected me with their experiment before I’d even taken my first breath. Before my heart had even formed. Before I was evenalive.
Another rupture inside me, this time in my soul.
Coughing up a small thimble of blood, I swallowed it down with a grimace.
Rook...Lucien’s panic blared through me.What’s going on?
